Wildfire Prevention and Education

The Bureau of Indian Affairs and Tribal Wildfire Prevention programs across the country provide leadership, training and guidance to develop strategies to reduce the number of human caused fires on Indian Reservations.Prevention program staff work closely with tribal leaders and communities to:

Implement reservation wide burn permit systems

Raise public awareness regarding human caused fires

Develop community wildfire protection plans

Invite community involvement to mitigate wildfire activity

Implement youth fire setter intervention programs

Conduct origin and cause wildfire investigations

Develop or revise Tribal Law and Order Codes pertaining to wildfire crimes.

Develop trespass cases from resource damaging wildfires

Recent Events (Last Updated: Nov 26, 2013)

The National Interagency Fire Center - Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Land Management partnered together to look at new opportunities for delivering fire prevention messages. For its pilot project, this “Campfire Safety” video was developed. The intention is to have a library of short, rough cut videos that can be easily loaded onto YouTube type delivery platforms for wide distribution and use by prevention programs.

For this pilot, a contract with the National Indian Programs Training Center (NIPTC) Video Production Studio in Albuquerque, NM was developed to produce the video. The NIPTC has state of the art recording equipment to produce a wide array of videos. They assisted with the development of the script, voice recording, on site filming, editing and producing the final version of the video.

Southern Pueblos Agency staff provided assistance with obtaining necessary permissions to film in the Manzano Mountains on the Pueblo of Isleta. A special thanks to Troy Cachini and his family for their time and volunteering to be filmed.

We are looking for suggestions of other prevention topics for video development that are needed. Please submit your ideas to Sam Scranton at samuel.scranton@bia.gov.

Targeting Arson

The largest fire in Indian Country history, the Rodeo-Chediski, was an intentionally set wildfire. This fire burned across 450,000 acres, destroyed more than 400 structures and cost over $100 million dollars to put out. The damages done tribal resources will last for generations and can not be measured.

The BIA and the tribes are especially concerned with how to deal with these fires because arson is the main source of wildfires in Indian Country. All citizens deserve to have a safe, fire-free community. That is why the BIA teamed up with WeTip, a national non-profit organization that offers a 24/7 telephone tip hotline (1-800-472-7766) for people to report information anonymously. A financial reward up to $10,000 is available to those who provide information that leads to proper adjudication of criminal activity associated with wildfires. To learn more about the WeTip program, visit www.WeTip.com.

If you or anyone you know has information pertaining to suspicious wildfires occurring on or near Indian Lands, call 1-800-472-7766 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to confidentially report your information.

Arson is not a part of Indian Culture! It is a crime against Indian people.